Apple Buys Itself an Augmented Reality Company

Microsoft has HoloLens. Oculus has the Rift. Google has Google Glass - possible even a 2.0 version. And Apple? Apple has... well... a bunch of augmented reality apps you can download but nothing home brewed and it's not really announced any intentions to jump on the Virtual Reality bandwagon. Well, that may be about to change...

Recent legal documents spied out by TechCrunch have shown that Apple has acquired Metaio, a German start-up firm that's been focused on augmented reality development since about 2003. Head over to their YouTube channel and you'll see a bunch of videos on the sort of things they've been working on.

TechCrunch reached out to Apple for comment on the sale and got this back:

“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

That's probably the politest way we've seen a company say "mind your own business and sod off" in a while. Still, with so much focus in the tech world right now centreing on both the AR and VR fields, Apple is almost certainly sorting out its defences should the faceputer boom really take off. And it'll probably claim it invented the whole thing, too. [TechCrunch]